Former Iraqi PM warns of intimidation before vote

BAGHDAD 
Iraq's former prime minister said Thursday that a recommendation to bar some political parties from March elections because of suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party amounts to intimidation.

Ayad Allawi, who served as Iraq's first postwar prime minister from mid-2004 to April 2005, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the de-Baathification process designed to root out supporters of Saddam's ousted regime is being used for political gain in the run-up to the March 7 parliamentary election.

"This is a process of severe intimidation and threats," Allawi said. "It's clear that they want to get rid of their opponents."

A parliamentary committee tasked with vetting political candidates for ties to the former Baath party regime recommended last week to Iraq's electoral commission that 14 political parties and one individual be barred from the vote because of alleged Baathist ties.

Among those named was prominent Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlaq, a political ally of Allawi's in the Iraqi National Movement, a coalition challenging Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the vote.

The recommendation to bar the parties - most of which are Sunni - potentially threatens the country's fragile security because it risks leaving Sunni voters feeling targeted and disenfranchised.

The de-Baathification policy was created under the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country after the 2003 invasion and stripped senior Baathists of their jobs. In 2008, the policy was relaxed and thousands of former Baathists who were not involved in past crimes were allowed to take government jobs.

But as the election approaches, former Baathists - a term often perceived as being aimed at all Sunni Arabs - have once again been singled out, especially by al-Maliki, who has blamed a string of high-profile bombings last year on Baathists.

Allawi, a fierce critic of al-Maliki, called on the prime minister to put a stop to what he described as the committee's intimidation.

"This is where he shoulders responsibility," the former prime minister said. "His speeches are encouraging these guys."

A spokesman for the prime minister was not immediately available for comment.

Ali al-Lami, director of the committee, said it sent a list of 500 candidates whom it recommends barring to the electoral commission on Thursday. It includes one person running on al-Maliki's slate of candidates, as well as the current defense minister, Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, al-Lami said.

He also said the committee had whittled down the list of political parties it was recommending barring, but al-Mutlaq's was still included.

Allawi, who was once a member of Saddam's Baath party, became the first postwar prime minister in 2004 at the head of an interim government. A member of a prominent Shiite merchant family, Allawi broke with the Baathists in the mid-1970s. He later survived an assassination attempt widely believed to have been ordered by Saddam and then went on to create the Iraqi National Accord, an opposition group dedicated to overthrowing Saddam's government.

His backing of the U.S. offensives to take back the Sunni city of Fallujah in Anbar province in 2004 and against the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf won him animosity across the Iraqi religious spectrum. But some Iraqis see him as one of the few politicians able to lead the country away from the religious parties that have dominated politics here for the last four years.

Allawi warned that as the U.S. prepares to draw down its forces from the country, Iraq has not made the necessary political reforms to foster reconciliation between the country's Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

"We are being thrown back into the sectarian divide in the country," Allawi said.